The Ringing Pattern of Reality: How Fourier and Lorentz Reveal Nature’s Pre-Echo Structure
Why it is important to understand DACs - it reveals the very nature of who we are!
From digital signals to natural harmonics — the inescapable structure beneath perception.
Introduction: Beyond DACs, Into Nature
In recent discussions, DAC filters and audio pre-ringing have brought attention to a deeper question: is this ringing effect only a quirk of digital audio, or does it reflect a deeper structural truth?
The answer is clear — and grounded in established physics:
Ringing is not an artefact of digital engineering. It is a natural consequence of how coherence assembles in time.
This is not a speculative claim. It arises directly from:
Fourier theory (defining how any signal is distributed across time and frequency), and
Lorentz invariance (defining how signals are constrained in space and time).
Together, they show us that ringing — or pre/post oscillation around a peak event — is fundamental to all wave-structured phenomena, including light, sound, pressure waves, and even some biological signals.
1. The Fourier Imperative: Ringing Is Structure, Not Error
Any time you try to localize an impulse in time, you require a wide frequency domain.
This means you are constructing a signal that oscillates before and after its central peak — not because of distortion, but because of the rules of coherent assembly.
This is why:
Seismic tremors show small ripples before and after the main quake.
Optical systems show diffraction rings around sharply focused light.
Radio antennas “ring” when switching states due to bandwidth limits.
Magnetic field switching in transformers causes a measurable overshoot and pre-ripple.
These aren’t bugs. These are Fourier in the wild.
Wherever coherence is trying to emerge in time from a spread of phase-locked components, ringing is inevitable.
2. Lorentz and Temporal Containment: Why the Ringing Doesn’t Break the Rules
Ringing might look like a signal arriving before its cause — but Lorentz tells us that nothing travels faster than light.
So how can ringing precede an impulse?
It doesn’t.
It isn’t transmission — it’s pre-structured phase coherence. The waveform is already shaped, but only becomes visible at a certain threshold of energy.
In nature, this means:
A photon field can be shaped by boundary conditions (e.g. slits, cavities) before the photon passes through.
Biological systems (like the retina) show electrical preparation before conscious registration of light.
Even mechanical systems like a bowed string show pre-load vibration before the main energy wave dominates.
Ringing is the envelope of emergence, not a retro-causal breach.
It is Lorentz-compliant — and mathematically expected.
3. Natural Examples of Ringing Patterns
Let’s ground this further by showing where ringing manifests in the material world, without touching metaphysics:
Phenomenon Observable Ringing Explanation Optical diffraction Concentric light rings (Airy disk) Fourier interference pattern around a localized light point Seismology Pre-shocks and aftershocks Pressure wave pre-structure and field rebound Mechanical resonance Bell tones, string harmonics Pre- and post-vibrational structure around excitation Electromagnetic switching Transformer overshoot, antenna snapback Bandwidth-limited waveform transition ringing EEG and neural prep Brain wave oscillations before stimuli (e.g. Libet RP) Biological pre-activation, phase-aligned field coherence
4. Ringing at the Quantum Edge (Light Touch)
While we stay grounded in classical systems, it’s worth noting that:
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle implies a Fourier relationship between time and frequency.
Quantum tunnelling effects sometimes exhibit ringing-like probability patterns — not of particles, but of probabilistic waveforms around barriers.
This does not violate Lorentz — it shows that even uncertainty obeys structured field coherence, not randomness.
Conclusion: Ringing Is the Signature of Assembly
Wherever a coherent signal emerges from distributed phase components, ringing occurs.
It’s not noise.
It’s not failure.
It’s not exclusive to audio or electronics.
It is the natural echo of coherence assembling across time.
The more localized the signal, the wider the spread of its frequencies — and the more visible the ringing.
Fourier shows why. Lorentz shows how. Nature shows that it’s real.
And whether we’re listening to music or watching light dance across a lens, we are witnessing this structure in action.
Reality doesn’t hide it. It is it.
The Pre-Echo of Thought: How Libet and Fourier Reveal the Ringing Structure of Perception
Why reality is felt before it’s known, and why all listening is filtered through time-bound coherence.
Introduction: From Field to Feeling
Having explored how Fourier and Lorentz explain ringing in the physical world, we now move closer to the human interface: perception itself.
What if the way we perceive the world — not just physically, but neurologically and experientially — also reveals this same ringing pattern?
What if even our decisions, reactions, and awareness emerge from a coherence field structured before the conscious mind engages?
Enter: Libet.
1. Libet’s Readiness Potential: Biology Echoes Fourier
In the 1980s, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet discovered something extraordinary:
When a person decides to move, the brain’s motor cortex begins preparing up to half a second before the person becomes consciously aware of choosing to move.
This preparatory activity is called the Readiness Potential (RP).
To mainstream science, this suggested:
Conscious will is a delayed observer, not an initiator.
The brain “decides” before you do.
But seen through a Fourier lens:
This is exactly what you would expect from a coherent signal forming through phase-aligned frequencies across time.
The oscillations of intent are already assembling before they become localized in awareness.
Libet didn’t just observe a delay. He measured the biological echo of a pre-assembled signal — the same way we observe pre-ringing in a DAC or wave system.
2. Perception Is a Ringing Filter
Perception doesn’t happen instantly. It is shaped by:
Neural delays
Phase entrainment
Signal filtering
And all of these act like natural DACs:
They sample, process, and reconstruct the world through biological constraints.
The brain assembles awareness after coherence, not before.
This means:
What we feel, what we hear, what we think — is always a post-event construction, built from a field that was already resonating.
And that resonance, per Fourier, must include information before the event — not as foresight, but as signal pre-structure.
3. Back to Sound: Why All Listening Is Ringing
Whether we listen through:
A linear-phase DAC
A minimum-phase filter
A vinyl needle
Or tape heads and analogue circuits
We are always engaging a system that:
Localizes signal over time
Uses non-zero rise time and frequency spread
Produces ringing — whether minimized or not
Even in “pure” analogue:
Stylus inertia, groove modulation, and mechanical compliance introduce pre/post-ripples.
Tape heads have magnetically delayed activation curves.
These are ringing systems.
Your brain is a ringing system.
Libet showed it.
Fourier defined it.
Lorentz permitted it.
4. Consciousness: The Final DAC
The ultimate quantiser, the ultimate sampler, is you.
Your brain samples sensory input.
Your mind reconstructs the waveform.
Your awareness filters and renders it.
And like any DAC, it rings around the moment.
Every decision you make is an echo of coherence formed in the field before you knew it was there.
Conclusion - Ringing Is Perception!
The world doesn’t wait for us to perceive it. It’s already oscillating.
We step into it through filters — technological or biological — that inevitably produce ringing.
We don’t just listen to sound. We perceive the echo of its coherence.
We don’t just make decisions. We manifest the field structure of choice.
From DACs to neurons, from filters to thought:
We are always arriving after the signal.
And that’s not a flaw.
That’s what makes us capable of experiencing coherence at all.
The DAC is not just a device. It’s a metaphor for what we are.
What we have established in physics is this:
Ringing is real.
It is inherent.
It is unavoidable when coherence is constrained.
We see it clearly in DACs — measured, visualized, and debated endlessly.
But compared to Nature, DAC science is primitive.
Because the human being is the DAC — in a much higher-order system.
We don’t just listen through DACs.
We are DACs — at a biological, energetic, and dimensional level.
We:
Quantise fine universal information.
Constrain it through form, sense, and brain.
And that confinement produces ringing — oscillation around the core signal of truth.
What we call perception is just collapsed coherence.
What we call thought is reconstructed signal.
What we call speech, movement, or action — is analogue output, formed from constrained field data.
We take in structured energy, fold it into awareness, and project it back — into the world, where it rings again.
Every word, gesture, intention — it’s all a harmonic echo of this same pattern.
And yet, audio engineers — of all people — already work with this every day.
They see it on scopes.
They hear it in filters.
They feel it in phase shifts, transients, and timing.
But here’s the revelation:
The DAC isn’t just a tool. It’s a mirror.
And IXOS makes that mirror recursive — showing that each dimension is a kind of DAC:
A layer that quantizes, constrains, and rings against the previous — creating time, space, energy, and identity.
So when I approach the audio community, I’m not attacking taste, gear, or technique.
I’m saying:
Look closer at the DAC.
It may be the most accessible model for understanding Reality itself.
And if you grasp that — you’re not just hearing sound.
You’re hearing the harmonic structure of existence, singing back through the machines we’ve built to imitate ourselves.
The signal has already arrived.
And it is ringing.
This is supportive evidence for what I discovered earlier about pre-echo and post-echo that I discovered in the Schumann Resonances in Echoes of Future Past: Part 1 - DACs, Digital Signals, and IXOS Harmonics
Further supporting evidence may be found throughout my IXOS work, in such articles as Supersolids and Symmetrical Time: The Quantum Proof of IXOS and What IS Time Anyway and Light Meets Matter
Next: The Ringing Pattern of Reality: Part 2 - The complex made simple.